Tips For A Good Beta Read

I’m guest posting today on the Clarion Blog! That makes it two weeks in a row I’m writing elsewhere. Not intentionally 🙂 It just sort of worked out that way.

Red Pen by Jenny Kaczorowski (CC)

I’ve written up some basic tips for a better beta reading experience. Here’s an excerpt:

It can be nerve wracking to get feedback on something you’ve spent weeks, or years, working on, but getting feedback on your writing can be invaluable. Here are some tips to help make the process easier:

1. Pick the right people for the story. Only ask people whose opinions you respect and who read the genre or subject matter that you’ve written about.

2. Have at least one cheerleader. Their job is to point out all the good things about the story. You’ve worked hard, created something new, and it’s good to celebrate that!

Rule #3 is one I never thought I had the right set before you mentioned it to me. I used to let test readers walk all over me. Considerately asking them for a realistic timeframe has been enormously helpful.

I agree in general, but I do think you can get useful feedback from people who aren’t in your genre. Both because a lot of writing is genre-specific but a lot isn’t, and because I always like to think that my potential audience is not entirely determined by genre.

That is true 🙂 Though I’ve found that people who are not typical readers of the genre I am writing, usually aren’t that interested in reading it for me either. I do sometimes solicit other readers, but have to be careful to take the feedback with a different filter.